Now that the AO3 is no longer weeping for mercy, I feel safe in pointing you all at What I Got For Yuletide.

A few days before Christmas, I noticed I had two gifts listed on my profile. My assigned writer had turned in their piece, and some total stranger had decided to write me a little something extra. Not until Christmas, though, did I discover what they were. Remember that crazy crossover idea, the The Nightmare Before Christmas/Hogfather mashup I really wanted but had no guarantee I would get?

Dear Readers, I didn’t just get one story of that sort; I got two.

My assigned writer produced “‘Twas the Night,” in which an unexpected midair collision between two sleighs leaves Discworld’s Death and Halloweentown’s Jack Skellington debating the nature of reality while Sally and Susan Sto Helit team up to fix the problem. A bit less than six thousand words of awesomeness, featuring guest appearances by characters from both stories, including (eeeeee!) the Death of Rats.

Then! Somebody else browsed the list of prompts, saw what I had requested, and wrote me “The Ill-Advised Skeletal Exchange Program,” wherein Death and Jack Skellington are pen-pals and arrange a temporary swap. Sally is Helpful, and Susan is Not Amused, and the Death of Rats shows up again, because he’s just too awesome to leave out.

Folklorist Brain is entirely fascinated to see the differences and similarities that result when two writers produce their own takes on the same prompt. Yuletide Brain is bouncingly happy to have gotten an extra gift. Anybody who’s interested is welcome, nay, encouraged to share in the bounty; go read the stories, and if you get a 502 error just try again later, when the archive has once again staggered to its feet.

(I can’t tell you yet what I wrote for Yuletide; that has to wait until after New Year’s, when the authors are revealed. Until then, I’m having to sit on my hands not to respond to the comments I’ve received so far. If anybody wants to play the “guess what I wrote?” game, though, your clues are that I wrote four pieces, one over 4K, two in the 1-2K range, and one less than 1K for Yuletide Madness; none are for novels, and no two are in the same fandom or media type. Also, no RPF: the modern stuff squicks me and the historical stuff was too much like work. Given that there were over three thousand stories produced for Yuletide 2010, though, and I have no pre-existing track record of fanfic for you to base your guesses on, I don’t expect anybody to spot my work. If you do, I’ll find some prize to give you.)